• FAT32 formatting

    tl;dr: Use diskutil if you need to format an SD card in FAT32 mode; useful when using Krikzz cassettes for use with Analogue Pocket.

  • Recording performance optimization videos for presentations and demos

    tl;dr: Use ScreenToGif, Shotcut, and FFmpeg to record load times of different treatments and show them side by side in one video.

  • onerror for detecting load failures

    tl;dr: Use the onerror event to detect img, input (of type="image"), object, link, and script load failures.

  • Less is more: counting lines of code

    tl;dr: If we think of software engineering as writing code, then refactoring and removing code must be an art. This is particularly meaningful when shipping JavaScript code that’s based on a client-side rendering framework.

  • Color-coded "status architecture" diagrams

    tl;dr: “Status architecture” is a term I made up to represent a color-coded architecture diagram that depicts not only how the system works, but also where we stand when it comes to getting the project released to production. I found it’s helpful for others to quickly understand bottlenecks just by glancing over such “status architecture” diagrams.

  • new Error().stack for tracing setTimeout calls

    tl;dr: By using setInterval or by recursively calling setTimeout, your code inadvertently slows down performance. Prefer using events to polling for a change in property values.

  • monitor utility

    tl;dr: monitor(fetch) can be used in the context of DevTools to print all fetch requests. More so, monitor(setInterval) and monitor(setTimeout) can be used to detect symptoms of bad coding.

  • debug utility

    tl;dr: debug(fetch) can be used in the context of DevTools to break on any outgoing fetch operation. There are more console utilities that can be used to ease debugging.

  • Webpack bundle size debugging

    tl;dr: A tiny script to list all files that are bundled together by Webpack. It’s useful to track unexpected external dependencies, internal libraries, SVG icons, or just plain JavaScript that’s not tree-shaken away.

  • getEventListeners utility

    tl;dr: Use getEventListeners in Chromium/Safari DevTools to get an idea of what’s being run “concurrently” and vying for resources. Note that getEventListeners only exists in the context of DevTools.

  • OPTIONS preflight caching

    tl;dr: Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), a good practice enforced by browsers for security purposes is a performance slowdown. Thus, the next best thing you can do starting with the 2nd request, is to cache your OPTIONS preflight responses, but there’s a catch.

  • adoptedStyleSheets as a performance optimization

    tl;dr: Use document.adoptedStyleSheets to attach one constructable stylesheet to many shadow roots. This offloads style changes to the browser and updates all web components that have adopted these style sheets. Otherwise, you’ll have to use JavaScript to “manually” update each shadow root which means it’s likely going to be slower.

  • Server-Timing HTTP header

    tl;dr: Use Server-Timing HTTP header to help debug internal latencies. While this is useful for debugging, it does potentially expose how your services are connected to each other. Even so, the debugging benefits outway the privacy risk.

  • JPEG minification with mozjpeg

    tl;dr: Use mozjpeg to minify JPEGs.

  • PNG minification with pngquant

    tl;dr: Use pngquant to minify PNGs.

  • GIF minification with gifsicle

    tl;dr: Use gifsicle to minify GIFs.

  • preload relationship

    tl;dr: Use <link rel="preload" href="/assets/atkinson-hyperlegible-regular-102a.woff2" /> to tell the browser it needs to schedule the asset to be downloaded and cached with higher priority.

  • sticky position

    tl;dr: Use position: sticky; to create parallax effects. Avoid any JavaScript as much as possible and use native CSS to handle the logic because it’s much more performant.

  • bind memoization

    tl;dr: Calling bind on a function is expensive because each call creates a net new function. Memoize bindings outside of loops and just call the bound functions inside the loops.

  • preconnect relationship

    tl;dr: Use <link rel="preconnect" href="https://api.example.com" /> if you know your website will make requests to your API, thumbnail, CDN endpoints etc.

  • merge chained filters

    tl;dr: Refactor sample code like [].filter((v) => v >= 0.4).filter((v) => v <= 0.6) to [].filter((v) => v >= 0.4 && v <= 0.6). This way, code will iterate on the array just once, rather than n times (once for each filter call).

  • ApacheBench

    tl;dr: If you need a quick way to test any API or server-side rendered (SSR) web page, use ab -c 10 -n 100 "https://example.com/" which says issue 10 concurrent out of 100 total requsts. This Apache benchmarking tools then displays performance statistics.

  • HTTP/3

    tl;dr: HTTP/3 is UDP-based, rather than TCP-based, thus connections are established faster. It’s based on Google’s QUIC protocol. Use HTTP/3 if available.

  • will-change

    tl;dr: Use the will-change CSS property to hint the rendering engine to optimize animations. Avoid the transform: translate3d(0, 0, 0); trick.

  • addEventListener + removeEventListener

    tl;dr: Avoid memory leaks by ensuring that if you register a callback to addEventListener you also unregister it with removeEventListener later on.

  • structuredClone instead of JSON.parse + JSON.stringify

    tl;dr: To deep clone objects, Use structuredClone(value) rather than the JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(value)) trick. Also, avoid Lodash’s _.cloneDeep(value) due to import cost.

  • requestAnimationFrame + setTimeout

    tl;dr: This is how you correctly measure performance after style, layout, and paint operations.

  • V8 flags

    tl;dr: A printout of all Chromium V8 flags. Some are useful for debugging.

  • HTTP/2

    tl;dr: Avoid HTTP/1.1 because browsers limit the number of concurrent requests going to HTTP/1.1 origins. Use HTTP/2.

  • performance

    tl;dr: Avoid using Date to measure durations. Use the performance interface to measure durations because of its high precision.

  • Intl

    tl;dr: Use Intl to compute relative dates, rather than rely on Luxon or Moment which are huge size-wise.

  • lazy loading

    tl;dr: Use loading="lazy" to defer loading images that are off-screen until the user scrolls near them.

  • SVG minification with svgo

    tl;dr: Use svgo to minify SVGs.

  • Brotli compression

    tl;dr: Compress assets such as JavaScript and CSS using Brotli rather than gzip.